XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  Buzz laughed. ‘That would be some score,’ he observed. ‘A million and three to success, two to ‘could have gone better’.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope,’ said Alex, and they toasted to that with mugs of terrible coffee.

  Days passed. They all knew that the skipper had set a provisional limit of ten weeks, for this – eighty days of Firewall knocking. The general feeling was that if the Gideans hadn’t noticed or responded by then, they weren’t going to. That would give them time to get back to Novamas, too, before they had to fall back on emergency rations. A final decision on whether they would stay out longer and go to E-rations would be made by Alex at the end of the eight weeks. The senior officers would be asked to give their opinions for the record as to whether they felt that there was sufficient operational need to justify them staying out in deep space on emergency rations, and Alex would certainly take the feeling of the other officers and crew into consideration, too. But it would, ultimately, as with every other decision about this, fall on his shoulders.

  Day sixty two was Alex’s birthday. He was twenty nine. The Fleet traditionally celebrated the skipper’s birthday on their ships, just a routine part of shipboard culture. So there was a dinner for him in the wardroom and an issue of cake for the crew, another highlight.

  After that, though, it was back to the same old routine, day following day in unvarying pattern.

  Day sixty seven was no different. First session, two bumps of the Firewall, a short break, then three more. Breakfast, five bumps, chores, fire-fighter training going on in the gym, lunch, and they were into the seven bump series.

  Alex was on the command deck, holding the conn as he always was during bumps. It was technically Very Vergan’s watch, but the T-protocol superseded that. Arie McKenna was junior officer of the watch, keeping them entertained with readings from Van Damek’s logs. There could hardly be many spacers who weren’t familiar with the logs of the greatest explorer in League history, as famous for his eccentricities as his discoveries.

  ‘Green, all green, sir,’ Buzz reported formally, after the post-bump checks had confirmed that the third bump of the series had not resulted in any ill effects to people or tech. ‘Holding course.’

  They had been looping through the same course, over and over again, for sixty seven days, now, locked on autopilot with nothing for the helm to do but sit and watch.

  ‘Stand by,’ Alex said, and gave a nod to Arie.

  ‘Okay, where were we...’ Arie said, going onto the PA and resuming her reading. All those who knew the logs in detail had recognised the passage that she’d chosen for this, and there were grins of anticipation throughout the ship. It was Van Damek’s claim to have found the Lost World of Defrica, on his explorations deep within the Carotis Nebula. According to him, he had found an inhabited system in there, populated by people in a Dark Age pre-industrial civilisation.

  ‘I landed my shuttle,’ Arie read, ‘in a rural area, so as not to alarm the population. After some minutes of walking, I encountered an adolescent female carrying a basket of vegetables. I was able, through the use of sign language, to negotiate a trade for some of these in exchange for a packet of candy. The vegetables, upon examination, proved to be similar to Altarbian Curly Parsnip, and made a welcome addition to our catering.’

  Alex grinned too, as there were chuckles across the ship. Van Damek was considered to have been completely nuts by the time he reported his finding of Defrica, not least because he had wiped his logs of anything that would identify its location and flatly refused to tell anyone where it was. It was, he said, a lovely world, and he didn’t want to be responsible for it being spoiled by busy-body interference, mining companies or intersystem corporations slapping fast food joints all over it. His claim to have found it at all was regarded as a hoax by most spacers, and the story about making first contact by trading candy for parsnips was just out there even by Van Damek’s standards.

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex acknowledged a good choice, amusing the crew, but with an eye on the time, called them back to readiness a few minutes later. ‘T minus one minute.’

  T was the turnaround. The count currently stood at 1861 turnaround events. The chances of event 1862 being any different did not seem high.

  ‘All secured, skipper,’ Buzz reported, once every section had confirmed readiness.

  ‘Thank you.’ Alex put one hand flat on the datatable, a habitual gesture. ‘All hands, brace for impact.’ Some of the crew were talking quietly amongst themselves, no more drama to this now than any other routine manoeuvre. Alex watched the countdown – five... four... three... two ...

  He opened his eyes, had the ‘yep, I’m okay’ moment and looked immediately at watch screens, confirming that they were heading back now, no alerts or red lights flashing.

  He saw it in the same moment Buzz did – in the same moment many people did, as a routine check turned into a double-take, gasps, exclamations.

  The elapsed time on the operations board said three minutes forty two seconds.

  It had said 17.4 seconds every single time they’d done this. They’d hit the Firewall on the same course at the same speed one thousand eight hundred and sixty one times and the elapsed time of turnaround and unconsciousness had been 17.4 seconds, bang on, every time.

  Now, it said three minutes forty two seconds. They were, Alex could see, still on their autopilot course, but this time they’d been unconscious twenty times longer.

  ‘We’re okay – we’re okay!’ Rangi Tekawa was checking, fast. ‘No injuries, skipper.’

  ‘What the...?’ Buzz pulled it together, managing to stay focussed. ‘No damage control alerts.’

  ‘Three and a half minutes?’ Very was struggling to comprehend. ‘We were out for three and a half minutes?’

  ‘All right...’ Alex got on the PA, calming the rising hubbub. ‘Attention on deck! Work to do! Checks, please!’

  Officers and crew got hastily to work, though this did not stop the buzz of excited speculation. Alex’s own heart was beating faster as he went back over the logs of the time they’d been out. There was nothing – as always, all scanners just blanked out into a fritz of white noise static, then popped back on again in the same moment that people started to wake up. There was nothing on the scopes before or after, not a hint of a glimpse.

  ‘Space-time anomaly?’ Morry Morelle suggested.

  ‘Maybe it’s like, for emphasis,’ Martine observed. ‘Like, we really mean it, push off!’

  ‘Or maybe they were like, just, having a look at us,’ Buzz said. They were broadcasting the first-contact greeting pack continuously, all the time, even when they weren’t hitting the Firewall, just in case they might be under observation from a ship that could see them even though they could not see it. There was no way to tell if that data-blip had been received.

  Could that have been it, Alex wondered? Had the Gideans come close enough to pick up their signal, holding them unconscious, perhaps, out of fear? Had first contact just been made?

  ‘Do we go again, sir?’ Buzz asked, and Alex felt the concerted attention of the officers and crew focus in on him, all of them excited but unsure, here, needing clear leadership. ‘Or abort?’

  Alex weighed up the options. If it was an emphatic ‘push off’ then it was probable that it would be repeated. If it was some kind of anomaly with the alien tech, though, then nothing had been achieved and they should keep going, so as not to break the pattern they’d been so careful to maintain all these weeks.

  ‘We go,’ he said, and added, firmly, ‘Come on, people. Brisk, please, and keep it together.’

  To general disappointment, even to some exclamations of dismay, turnaround event 1863 went back to the usual pattern. 17.4 seconds elapsed. The next two were the same. Finally, they stood down.

  ‘Was that it, do you think?’ Buzz asked, though he had to know that Alex didn’t know any more than he did himself.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alex said. ‘I really don’t.’ He nodded thanks
to the rigger who’d brought around drinks. It was a measure of how preoccupied he was that he took a drink of coffee and didn’t even taste it, setting it down absently on the grav-safe ring. ‘It’s not us – nothing about the course we’re on would explain a deviation like that. But we have no way to know if the tech that they use might sometimes result in a much longer blackout.’

  He looked at Shion as he said that, and she shook her head regretfully. This was not the same technology as the Veil, or the quarantine alarm that they believed could still be operating at Novamas. That vibrated ships, with no element of rendering people unconscious or turning the ship itself around. Shion didn’t even know how that tech worked, and the Firewall technology was way beyond her and her people.

  ‘My guess, though, is that they were probably having a look at us,’ she said. ‘And if they picked up our signal, they’ll have taken that off to analyse. If that is the case, there’s no way to know how long that might take – weeks, months, centuries – or, of course, what decision they’ll come to about it. But I think the chances are quite high that they came and had a look at us and hopefully, picked up our signal.’

  Alex nodded. ‘We can only speculate,’ he observed. ‘So, without any way to know whether we did just have an encounter, I think the best thing we can do is just keep going with the pattern.’

  ‘Or, perhaps,’ Buzz suggested, thoughtfully, ‘show a response to the unusual length of blackout time by changing the schedule, basing it on units of three minutes forty two.’

  They were still talking about that, and working out possible schedules, when the Gidean ship arrived.

  Chapter Twenty

  Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. It was as if the entire ship had been put into a stasis field. They were all just staring.

  The ship – if it was a ship – was huge. It had just appeared, not coming onto their scopes and approaching but just popping into existence directly to starboard.

  It was hard to tell exactly how big it was, or how far away. Scopes were fluctuating wildly, giving frequent readings of ‘data conflict’ and ‘data unobtainable’. Visual scopes were no better, since all they showed was a massive spherical blur.

  ‘It’s either vibrating or pulsing,’ said Shion, the first words spoken on the Heron since the alien ship had appeared. Then she looked up, as if a little surprised to find that nobody was responding, saw the stunned looks on their faces, and grinned. ‘Skipper?’ she prompted, and Alex managed to tear enough of his attention away from gaping at what he was seeing, into responding to what she’d said.

  ‘Right,’ he said, and then, with a truly heroic effort, got his brain around what she’d told him, and managed an intelligent response. ‘Can we clean up the image?’

  ‘Incoming comms!’ Ceri Belmok, the communications sub, squeaked, and his voice rose so high that it was almost a yelp, ‘On screen!’

  Words appeared on the incoming signals screen.

  Salutations how do you do hello.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Buzz breathed, and he was not the only one. Alex’s heart felt as if it might burst out of his ribs. His eyes were brilliant and he’d risen to his feet, quite unconsciously.

  ‘Signal back...’ he started to say, but more words were already appearing.

  Are you secure safe okay interrogative question query.

  ‘Skipper!’ Shion spoke quickly, accessing the comms screen as she did so, and making an adjustment to the way that the signal was being presented. ‘It’s the Solaran phrase book,’ she told him.

  Alex looked at the message, which now read, Are you secure/safe/okay?

  He gave a quick nod to show his understanding. Shion had had them in fits of laughter with her account of how she’d spoken League Standard on first arrival at the Amali base. The phrase book compiled by the Solarans was at the level of a ‘get by’ very basic guide. The set phrases listed often offered three alternatives listed in order as formal, informal and colloquial. Since this was not at all clear in the instructions for using the phrasebook, Shion had believed that ‘colloquial’ meant using all three of the words in the phrases she’d learned, resulting in some confusion.

  The meaning of this signal, at least, seemed clear.

  ‘Voice to comms, skipper,’ Buzz told him, and Alex gave a little nod, without taking his eyes off the screen. This was it. This was the historic moment when a human would speak to a Gidean.

  ‘We come in friendship, and mean you no harm.’ The words were not his, but the script for first-contact currently approved by the Diplomatic Corps. Alex, like every other Fleet skipper, had been required to learn it and role-play it in command school, just in case of deep space exodiplomacy encounter. Now, he had to say it for real. His voice was steady, though his breathing was noticeably faster than usual.

  Are you secure/safe/okay? The message flashed back at them, insistently, with an added, Do not feel apprehension/fright/fear. Then, after a moment, five more words appeared.

  They all stared at them, nobody sure how to react.

  We do not eat humans.

  It was hard to tell who started laughing first, Shion or Alex. When they did, though, gales of tension-busting laughter burst out through the ship. Alex settled it down quickly, though, and did not jump to any conclusions – it was possible that it was meant as a serious reassurance, after all.

  ‘We are not afraid,’ he said, which wasn’t entirely true, though excitement and joy was outweighing fear. ‘We are honoured, delighted and very happy to meet you. We are humans, from many worlds...’ he touched a pre-prepared comms signal, with that, broadcasting a data-tagged image they’d spent quite some time working on. It contained a star chart showing the League borders, and their worlds. All the worlds people on the Heron came from were highlighted, with data-tags containing images and mini-profiles of them. ‘And a karee, from Pirrell.’ That was a separately identified world on the chart, with an image and profile of Shion. ‘We represent the sistering of worlds called the League.’

  There was an expectation, obviously, that the people on the other ship would reciprocate with some information about themselves and their world. Instead, they received bioscan images. One was clearly of a reptile, with the number 1 beside it. The other was of something that looked monstrous, scaly, insectoid, though with eight stubby little legs. It had the number 8,253,196 beside it.

  Interrogative/request/query life forms.

  ‘Oh – that’s Lucky!’ Rangi had come running onto the command deck, taking his place at the datatable, breathlessly. He pointed at the reptilian scan. Then, recognising the other creatures at a glance, ‘And dust mites.’

  Alex looked at him, and slowly came to terms with the realisation that the other ship had scanned them in such detail that they had even identified, and counted, how many dust mites were aboard the frigate. Starships were kept very clean, air suctioned through high filter processing, floors and surfaces constantly patrolled by autobots. Even so, even a gramme of dust could harbour thousands of mites. Eight million mites on the ship was actually well within Fleet tolerances. Just not something any spacer really wanted to know.

  ‘The reptile is a lizard; a gecko,’ Alex signalled. ‘Species Gekkonidae Diplodactilus Frenatus.’ He attached the information pack that they usually sent out to kids. ‘It is a companion species, a mascot, a pet. The arachnids are dust mites, species Dermatophagoides Astros.’ He found and sent a similar infopack on the species.

  Arachnids negative companion species/ mascot/ pet?

  ‘No, they are parasites.’ Alex was bewildered as to why they were having a conversation about dust mites, but he was guessing that the Gideans – if these were Gideans – were concerned about the nature of the life forms they had scanned. ‘They are harmless, no danger to us or to you.’

  As he was speaking, though, he heard Martine say ‘Got it!’ with a note of triumph. He’d been aware that she, Ceri Belmok and Shion had been working on the image that they were getting of the other ship, trying to get a better loo
k at it.

  Now, quite suddenly, the big blur resolved into a crystal-sharp image and everyone caught their breath again.

  The Gidean ship was enormous. Scopes were now reading it at 14.87 kilometres in diameter. It might not be the size of a planet, but it was certainly big enough to be defined as a moon-sized object. It was a perfect sphere, with no indication of any external systems, propulsion or comms arrays.

  And it was just breathtakingly beautiful. It looked like a soap bubble but with the colours intensified, iridescent greens and blues shifting across its surface.

  ‘It’s not solid,’ They were starting to make sense of the data, now. As he looked at the cleaned-up readouts Alex could see that the sphere was in fact varying in diameter between 14.87 and 11.56 klicks, pulsing in and out like a heartbeat, but pulsing at the rate of five hundred and forty two beats per second. It was no wonder that their scanners and computers hadn’t been able to figure that one out. Martine, Alex saw, had got this image and cleaned up the data by taking snapshots timed to coincide with the pulsing. ‘That’s a forcefield.’